Your scenario would not work as belgian law forbids to ceate a financial incentive for 'coupled' sales. So the 300$ mail in rebate would just simply not work. Granted, mobistar has an excellent EDGE network -and is incidentally part of the Orange Group, which helps matters I guess.

However BASE (the 3rd operator) has national EDGE coverage as well, whereas Proximus (the leader) does not (very good 3G though).

My guess is that a Belgian deal will be as complicated as can be as the handset will have to be sold unlocked and at the same price for everyone. One could stipulate that you can only bu the handsets in the mobistar centers, so brace yourelf for some hard selling of services, but at the end of the day I would be in my right to ask for a naked handset, walk out of the shop and put my present SIM card in it.

Anyway the only difference between an official iPhone carrier and a non-official is the absence of visual voicemail, which to me is a nice-to-have feature but not a core criterion

I am the first to admit I know nothing of Belgian laws, but from a consumer choice point of view it sounds excellent that phone sales are totally decoupled from subscription sales. From a monetary point of view it must suck for consumers, though? Financial incentives are only bad when you have no choice but to accept one - after all, an 'incentive' by definition can't be bad, but it can be different to what you want.

I'm not sure I agree that "the only difference between an official iPhone carrier and a non-official is the absence of visual voicemail". EDGE coverage surely must play a part, and in the not too distant future (within a phone contracts length from now I would assume) a network having the correct type of 3G with good coverage could well play a part also. In other countries (might not apply for Belgium though) tech support and warranties could also come into play also and these should not be sneezed at.

R&D never figures into the cost of a producing any product. Besides that, it is logically and theoretically inconsistent to do so. As a side note, in-house R&D must be expensed in the period incurred and is never capitalized unless it for certain types of software - that is the only exception. However, products can be made potentially for many years.

"R&D never figures into the cost..." - at several companies I have worked for it certainly has figured into cost, and has been collected effectively.
"in-house R&D must be expensed in the period incurred" - it certainly must. But that doesn't mean you have to forget that you have paid it? Or that you can't recoup it later?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Koose1

The reason for not tying R&D expense to any product is that the fruits of R&D can become evident in multiple products down the line or in none. The benefits of R&D remains open indefinitely. In theory, R&D is essentially a sunk cost. Seriously, if we were to look at things from your point of view, then the application of R&D to product cost could potentially be duplicated and this would result in major inconsistencies. Also, what kind of cost do you associate it with? Is it a fixed cost or variable cost? It is fixed. Is it a product cost or a period cost? It is a period cost. Plus, it is an indirect cost since it cannot be really be traceable to a single product (again, the number of products that ultimately will benefit from the research is indeterminable).

Other period costs like sales and marketing should really not factor into product costs either. Since these are administrative costs as well as period costs, they can only factor into units sold during the period in determining net income by product line (if such costs can be traced to the product).

All these arguments revolve around the assumption that all R&D generated by a company cannot be tracked to specific products. In many industries, R&D can be quite specific, or the result of it is obvious enough that certain product lines may have taken a certain percentage of R&D time, whilst others a different percentage. It is just as troublesome for a business to have a product cost that includes no R&D (but have an unaccounted R&D sink) as it is to include too much R&D cost and not be competitive for price.

Poor management of manufacturing costs factors in also. You say R&D recouping or product cost "..could potentially be duplicated..". It could also not be duplicated, with proper management.

".. what kind of cost do you associate it with? Is it a fixed cost or variable cost?" - It can be whatever gives you the best outcomes. It may be fixed in a sense that it occurs fully before the initial manufacture on the product, but you can feed back information about how much R&D was recouped in certain areas to better guide future R&D, and vary the R&D costs for other products. Also, if another product that uses similar R&D is created, you could subsequently lower the R&D costs tied to the first product.

"Is it a product cost or a period cost?" What does it matter? It is a cost that you can account for, and potentially recoup.

"..the number of products that ultimately will benefit from the research is indeterminable.." - This is only true without analytics. There are more than adequate models available to trace all this. 'It cant be done' rarely stays true for long.

The argument that inflating a product cost specifically for R&D will make you less competitive is interesting. In the whole scheme of things you are still paying the R&D money out, and you are still getting it back somehow, through either increased product cost, or taken from profit margin to pay for 'expense' of R&D sink. The only difference is how you are accounting for R&D.

I agree with most of what has been posted here, its not fanboyish ravings either, its well reasoned and sound "in the field" experience. I spent a while on Linux, and it was a breath of fresh air, but ultimately it was that which sent me on to Apple.

Apparently you have a perspective as biased as the rest, cause all I can see is fanboy bullshit.

Quote:

Originally Posted by etandrib

On his other complaint about the operating system being a lock in - I don't see how linux is any different. It is a platform and you are working on either a windows, linux, or os x platform. That is the lock -in. It is part of development. .... but for now it doesn't pass the "my mom can use it test" so I'm not going to support it.

Linux is completely different animal because you can assemble your own version of the OS with only the parts you need. You are free to basically create what you want and how you want it. Don't like the UI or desktop? change it.
Want to change a feature that annoys you? just remove it from the code. etc.

Quote:

Originally Posted by anantksundaram

What's Linux? Why should I care?
Can anyone name major, paradigm-shifting software developments that have come out of Linux? would you please include in that an argument why it has a market share of about 1%?

You are as short-sighted and deluded as most of the apple fanboys! Name a major software development to come out of linux? How about nearly every major development in software engineering. 1% marketshare? Are you ***** serious? That's the most ignorant statement I've ever read on this forum. Linux distros may not be quite ready for desktop use by Joe sixpack, but Linux and BSD derivatives basically run the entire world. There are literally billions of devices from large mission critical enterprise systems to research organizations to scientific and engineering labs to national labs HPC supercomputers to web servers to embedded systems, linux is EVERYWHERE. Get a CLUE!

Quote:

Originally Posted by drumpat01

HEY LINUS!!! Not everyone wants to have to program their own computer to get it to work correctly and with out problems. This why you only have a 1% market share. I proudly have a linux box running Ubuntu BUT its STILL more buggy than any OSX I've ever owned. Not to mention it looks better.

Again, the 1% marketshare number is total bullshit. Yes, desktop linux has a ways to go until your grandma can use it, but half the god damn internet runs linux server distros

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adders

It's interesting hearing Linus' criticism of both OS X and Windows, describing them as a means for Apple and Microsoft to control the environment. I'd say a controlled environment gives the best opportunity for stable and productive programs. Yes, I'm sure in both cases there are many people who'd give an arm and a leg to have a glimpse of the source in either case, but equally both companies give pretty comprehensive integration guidelines, which are probably a damn sight more useful than just looking at pages of code.

The thing that debilitates Linux so much is that the situation with all the distributions is much akin to the worst days of the browser wars, with Netscape and Microsoft chucking in their own new propietary tags at their pleasure, leaving web developers the headache of trying to write code that keeps all of the browsers happy. Thankfully, the advent of the W3C has gone a long way to curing these ills, meaning browsers are now competing more over the efficiency of the user interface, security and performance rather than messing with the (X)HTML standards.

The teams that produce the range of Linux distros need to form their own equivalent of the W3C and start standardising the distros complete with integration guidelines for application developers - in other words start controlling the environment - in order to have a chance of delivering the stability needed to get the level of interoperability between applications on the platform that Mac and PC users take for granted.

Then again, I could be wrong.

Hey, look, a reasoned comment on this forum without fanboy nonsense. I completely agree with this. Ubuntu has and is making good headway towards making the dream of a user friendly desktop linux a reality, but obviously there is a ways to go. Besides not having a standards body, One of the major problems is vendors not supporting their hardware with Linux drivers. Since most new computers don't come with Ubuntu pre-installed, many of the hardware vendors screw the people who would like to run Linux by not porting their drivers.

"I think Leopard is a much better system [than Windows]," Torvalds said. "[However,] OS X in some ways is actually worse than Windows to program for. Their file system is complete and utter crap, which is scary."

A good job then that most people don't buy Macs to program them. I'd prefer to buy a system with applications that are useful to me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

The OS is a shell meant to be an "invisible" means of getting to applications, he said. For hardware manufacturers, Linux is said to be a better alternative that is customizable for specific applications or very low-power devices like media players. With most commercial operating systems, however, the need to drive profits often distracts from improving performance or other important but less alluring components of the software.

I'm sure that Linux is an excellent platform for solutions development - so where are they? Linus seems to think that useful applications can be developed by obsessing with the technology as opposed to obsessing with the application - whats more complicated? A person or a computer? He's driving the solution from the wrong direction.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

To Microsoft and Apple [the OS is] a way to control the whole environment... to force people to upgrade their applications and hardware," Torvalds explains.

How oppressive they are! Those evil people who give us solutions not promises (well one does anyway). Gotta love geeks, they'll always think they have 90% of the problem solved and it's just that last 10% that gets 'em when they could only ever grasp 10% of the problem in the first place.

McD

Why does somebody ask me a question, I can never understand, I can never provide the answer, but believe I can.

You, sir, don't have a clue. The main reason for the weak market share of Linux is to be seen in the optionitis that plagues the Linux world, i.e. the lack of consolidating forces to relieve users outside the geek realm of the unneccessary choices you have to make.

An unfortunate side-effect of that not-so-clever 'collective development' model giving rise to an open-source 'movement' that doesn't really know where it's moving to and hence the lack of compelling argument for users to jump. Great engine-room but passengers wouldn't buy a ticket to ride down there.

McD

Why does somebody ask me a question, I can never understand, I can never provide the answer, but believe I can.

Err, Linux is used in mission-critical environments every day. There's no problem with Linux in a *non-desktop* environment. My web server runs Linux, my email server runs Linux, my cable modem runs Linux (internally -- it's not exposed to the user in any way). my employer's firewall runs Linux (it's a dedicated firewall appliance from a Big Name that, internally, is Linux), etc... but you put it on the desktop, it just ain't there and won't be until someone sits everybody down and makes them all act like adults, and thus far nobody's cared to do so -- not Red Hat, not IBM, not Ubuntu, nobody. Indeed, Red Hat is the primary culprit in the whole desktop situation -- rather than act like adults and work with the KDE guys (the originators of desktop Linux), they went and re-invented the Linux desktop -- badly. And then made sure that when they *were* forced to support KDE, it was supported badly by all Red Hat derived Linux distributions, much in the same way as the Debian Linux geeks did the same deal with Debian-derived Linux distributions.

It's a shame, because in many ways desktop Linux is quite innovative. In Leopard, open up a Terminal window and hit Cmd-T. Whoa, a tabbed CLI opens! Guess what, Linux did that eight years ago, in KDE 2.0. Same deal with tabbed browsing -- came out of the KDE project, they invented it with Konquerer over eight years ago. And there's still some things that KDE does "right" that neither MacOS nor Windows gets "right" -- for example, there is no difference between a File browser (equiv. of Mac Finder) and the Konqueror web browser, it's just different protocol engines talking to the same rendering engine in both cases, so if you click on an HTML file in your file browser window it just opens up. Be looking at a directory, decide you want to look at a web site instead, click the 'Bookmarks' menu item and select a bookmark, voila. In the same window. No problem. Or if you want to see an FTP site instead, type the FTP URL in, and it appears just like a local File browser window -- and you can just drag files out of it to your desktop or into another File window, another File window that might even be *another* FTP site because the File browser doesn't care what the Reader and Writer modules are, it just calls the ReadFile and WriteFile API's. In other words, the entire desktop is network-transparent. And KDE was doing this eight years ago.

But the problem is, it just *does not work*, because not all software is compiled against the same desktop, and thus it doesn't all work together correctly. Even cut-and-paste between Linux desktop applications is problematic, because the different desktops use different ways of doing cut-and-paste. And there appears to be no "grownups" in the Linux community willing to fix that. Until that happens... (shrug). Linux will remain an oddity on the desktop, used only by geeks who are hacking Linux distributions together and stuff like that, rather than a mainstream environment. And Linus, with his "I like diversity" nonsense, ain't helpin. There's nothing wrong with the "benevolent dictator" approach to issues like this. It's the approach Steve Jobs takes. That's why MacOS hangs together so well as a complete desktop environment, you have a benevolent dictator up top making sure it hangs together. Anarchy can produce some good bits and pieces, like the KDE desktop environment, but it can't create a whole system out of those bits and pieces. It takes an adult to do that -- and in desktop Linux, ain't many adults out there.

And there's still some things that KDE does "right" that neither MacOS nor Windows gets "right" -- for example, there is no difference between a File browser (equiv. of Mac Finder) and the Konqueror web browser, it's just different protocol engines talking to the same rendering engine in both cases, so if you click on an HTML file in your file browser window it just opens up.

Windows used to do this as well when Microsoft was trying to make Internet Explorer an inseparable part of Windows. Fortunately they took the feature out because it was a bad idea. A file browser and a web browser, while both allowing you to browse information, are really very different things. A web browser is used to view and find content on the internet, but I am not looking through folder and file hierarchies, I am reading and viewing the content of web pages. A file browser is used to deal with files, moving files, renaming files, finding files; I am not using a file browser to change the contents of my files, though I might want to preview them before I open the program I need to edit it, which is I guess why Apple developed quick look.

Ultimately they are both called browsers, but I use them both very differently and expect each of them to provide me with different tools that are appropriate to their purpose. If my file browsing window suddenly turns into a browser window it would be confusing, as it was when Microsoft thought it might be a good idea and gave the concept a try. In the case of OSX, the buttons and functions I use in the finder are very different then the ones I use in Safari. Should the finder window change when I open a web page? What about the menu items, should we just combine all the menu items that are available in both applications? It would be a little much, don't you think? I can't see any reason why the two should be combined as the mental model that the user creates to manage both tasks and the things that are kept visible and easily accessible are very different in both cases. From my point of view, those would be good enough reasons why the two should be distinct applications that can be differentiated on screen. Each allows the user to focus on what they are actually trying to accomplish without the other task getting in the way. Some may find it desirable to have the two browsers mixed into one, but I would say rather then being innovative, it is an example of bad design since the unique purpose and function of each warrants keeping them separate.

I'm going to call BS on that "big difference" thingy. Data is data, whether it's local or on the Internet. You should be able to view data and move data around without having to load up different programs based on whether it's local or on the Internet. I've used Konqueror and the integration makes things much easier to use. I don't care whether a location is on the Internet or not. For example, with Konqueror I don't have to right-click on a link to a file that I want to download off a web page or FTP page and select "download". I just open up whatever folder I want to see, drag the link to that folder via drag-and-drop, and voila. And I don't have to figure out how to upload a file to a FTP site. I just drag a file from a folder (maybe even another FTP site), drag it to the folder window that's open to ftp://badtux@foo.somewhere.com/some/folder, drop it, and KDE handles the rest transparently.

From a network transparency and usability point of view, the KDE desktop matches the best I've seen, and I've been doing this since the beginning -- I mean, back to Apple Lisa days. I've seen every desktop that has ever existed short of a few one-offs such as the Xerox one. From a technological innovation point of view, KDE created quite a few things that now are accepted as "normal" -- tabbed browsing, tabbed CLI windows, etc. -- and created a few things that nobody else currently does -- the network-transparent browsing, for example. The problem is that Linux has never standardized on any one desktop, any one sound system, any one API for drag and drop, any one API for network transparency, so of all the available programs for Linux they just don't work together properly. And if it don't work... (shrug). Well, if it don't work, I buy a Mac (which is what I did after trying several Linux music production programs and they simply refused to work with each other properly, each compiled against a different desktop, a different sound system, and getting into big arguments whenever I tried to load them up).

So I think Linus's criticisms of the Mac are pure sour grapes. His approach towards the "Desktop Wars" on Linux ("diversity is good!") resulted in a mess, and rather than clean up that mess, he'd prefer to throw stones at the *other* Unix-based OS widely available on consumer-class machines -- i.e., MacOS X. Nokia has shown how to clean up the mess with their Maemo Linux project for small touch-screen tablet computers. Maemo holds together suprisingly well, albeit still lacking easy ways to perform certain functions that I expect from a virtual desktop (but it's for a handheld form factor so that's somewhat excusable, I suppose). Unfortunately, nobody else in LinuxLand seems willing to listen.

badtux, I understand what you are saying. My understanding of your original post was that you were touting KDE's ability to display web pages in the same window that you use for file browsing. I can understand how it would be a benefit to have seamless access to files wherever they happen to be and that the FTP integration is a great feature.

My point was that when it comes to viewing web pages I don't think it is a good idea to have that integrated into the file browser. Yes, web pages are data, but so are word processing documents, mp3 files, and e-mails for that matter. Should I be using my file browser to open all of those files as well? There is a level of integration that makes sense, but when I actually want to view a web page, it makes more sense in my mind to have it open in a web browser window rather then having it take over my file browser window.

badtux, I understand what you are saying. My understanding of your original post was that you were touting KDE's ability to display web pages in the same window that you use for file browsing. I can understand how it would be a benefit to have seamless access to files wherever they happen to be and that the FTP integration is a great feature.

My point was that when it comes to viewing web pages I don't think it is a good idea to have that integrated into the file browser. Yes, web pages are data, but so are word processing documents, mp3 files, and e-mails for that matter. Should I be using my file browser to open all of those files as well? There is a level of integration that makes sense, but when I actually want to view a web page, it makes more sense in my mind to have it open in a web browser window rather then having it take over my file browser window.

My point was that when it comes to viewing web pages I don't think it is a good idea to have that integrated into the file browser. Yes, web pages are data, but so are word processing documents, mp3 files, and e-mails for that matter. Should I be using my file browser to open all of those files as well? There is a level of integration that makes sense, but when I actually want to view a web page, it makes more sense in my mind to have it open in a web browser window rather then having it take over my file browser window.

Precisely. We create & manage different types of data totally differently, that was the whole point of iLife. While windows (and from what you write Linux) users obsess with their file systems Mac users are more application-centric allowing us to manage our data from the view point of what we want to do with it rather than what it is.

Linux and Windows apps development are driven by the technology rather than productive outcomes. The inability to understand that useful outcomes are more important than technical consolidation (the difference between the real designer and the technical architect) is what's causing windows to lose market-share to Macs and will prevent Linux from getting into the desktop game. Both your and Linus' comments are a testament to this.

McD

Why does somebody ask me a question, I can never understand, I can never provide the answer, but believe I can.

If Linus wants to remedy the situation, he's going to have to weigh in on the "Desktop Wars" in Linux-land. But thus far, all he says about it is "I like choice." Bah humbug, choice is fine, but if it don't work, who gives a ****?

From Wikipedia:

Quote:

Torvalds has commented on official GNOME developmental mailing lists that, in terms of desktop environments, he encourages users to switch to KDE [10] and he explained why.[11]

I think Linux is the future. How can a free operating system not be, especially when it is so powerful? That said, I also find it difficult to use.

(About me: I've got an aging Dell desktop running XP that dual boots into Ubuntu; I've also got a MacBook running Leopard. Since my desktop hardware is falling apart, and I'm loath to get rid of it--just because--I'm trying to learn Linux; it runs a lot better than Windows. Meanwhile, I can't get over the fact that my MacBook, gotten as a toy, is the most rational solution. But the MacBook most often sits in a drawer, unused, since I don't want my cat walking all over it. Anyway...)

Linus is a cool guy. He doesn't see Linux as competing against Windows and Mac OS, he just sees it as the better choice most of the time, and there's a philosophy at work. I don't exactly know what his gripes are about the OS X file system, but the finder certainly needs work. Also, there was that genius murderer dude in the Linux camp who was doing something revolutionary with the file system before his arrest, maybe there's a contrast in that regard.

Despite the difficulty associated with using Linux, I'm sticking with it. Ubuntu is a noble philanthropic project and it's bound to gain market share (gradually) and improve (exponentially) as time goes by.

I bought Apple stock at $64 when I was converted from a Windows guy to being smitten with the Mac: if I wanted a Mac, I knew investing was a safe bet. Now that I've got some Linux under my belt, I truly question how long commercial OSs can dominate. My money is probably safe for my lifetime though.

When will the governments realize it's got to be funky, sexy ladies?-Flight of the Conchords